Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Week 3: The Teaching Portfolio

With last week’s discussion of ethics and
professionalism in teaching, this week we discussed the set of resources known
as the teaching portfolio. We spoke
about everything from what a teaching portfolio is, to why it’s important,
what it contains, and how it can and
should be tailored to suit the needs
of specific institutions.

So: What is a teaching portfolio?

A teaching portfolio is a collection of
documents related to your teaching, culled from a variety of sources (not just
student ratings!). This collection, focusing on a diverse range of teaching
materials, includes both the documents themselves as well as brief descriptions
of the documents in order to provide broader context to what’s included.

Why is a teaching portfolio important?

There are lots of reasons! Some of the ones we
discussed included:

·Portfolios provide
documented evidence of teaching that help provide job application readers with
a better sense of your skills and accomplishments as a teacher – in short, they
help to humanize you within the confines of a process (the job search) that
often seems to do the opposite.

·The process of selecting
and organizing material for a portfolio can help one reflect on and improve
one’s teaching.

·Portfolios are a step
toward a more public, professional view of teaching as a scholarly activity.

·Portfolios can offer a
look at development over time, helping one see teaching as on ongoing process
of inquiry, experimentation, and reflection.

·Teaching portfolios
capture evidence of one’s entire teaching career, in contrast to what are
called course portfolios that capture evidence related to a single course.

Also key to note in
these processes is that teaching portfolios can serve many purposes:

·Job applicants for
faculty positions can use teaching portfolios to document their teaching
effectiveness.

·Faculty members up for
promotion or tenure can also use teaching portfolios to document their teaching
effectiveness.

·Faculty members and
teaching assistants can use teaching portfolios to reflect on and refine their
teaching skills and philosophies.

·Faculty members and
teaching assistants can use teaching portfolios, particularly ones shared
online, to “go public” with their teaching to invite comments from their peers
and to share teaching successes so that their peers can build on them.

What goes into a teaching portfolio?

The specifics can vary, but generally speaking,
a portfolio includes the following basic components:

·Title page

·Table of contents (or
menu if your portfolio is electronic)

·Introduction or summary
of portfolio contents

·Sections, with brief
summaries of content for each section

·Most important: a
summary that reflects on evaluations and how you have used them to improve your
teaching effectiveness

In terms of what material is included in your
main sections, the possibilities are nearly endless! We reviewed the following
list, taken from Vanderbilt’s teaching resources center (link to page provided
below):

·Requests for advice on
teaching by committees or other organized groups

Regardless of where you are in the graduate
school process, we all agreed that it’s never to early to start compiling your
portfolio! This makes it much easier to tailor your portfolio to specific
institutions when the time comes. To that end, consider compiling a
“master portfolio” in a three-ring binder, file-folder system, or online, then
culling materials from the “master portfolio” to create a portfolio that is
tailored for a specific position to which you are applying. Keep in mind the
type of position (e.g., teaching “load,” tenure expectations) and the specific
teaching responsibilities that you would expect to fulfill in that position.
Rather than including a random selection of syllabi for courses you are
prepared to teach, for example, if you are applying for a position at a large
university, you might include three syllabi: one for an introductory
undergraduate course, one for an advanced undergraduate course, and one for a
graduate-level course. If you are applying for a position at a small,
liberal-arts college, you might include syllabi for a required, introductory
lecture course or laboratory, a course for “non-majors,” and a more advanced
seminar.

Thankfully,
there are many, many resources designed to help people put together a
compelling and effective teaching portfolio. Some of the best are included
below – please consult them for more information, or contact the CEE for a free
consultation!

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The aim of this group is to provide a space for graduate students and post-docs on the UC Davis campus to feel supported in our efforts to become better teachers. This is a place to discuss teaching and learning philosophy and practice. We meet with the purpose of creating opportunities for collaborative interdisciplinary professional development in a community setting.

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